To improve the living environment, modern furniture has to meet criteria of functionality, simplicity and safety in less and less space. In particular, in the hotel field, bedrooms are rather small and are required simultaneously to offer sleeping space and working space allowing the use of, for example, computers. This observation has prompted the development of foldaway furniture allowing valuable space to be saved depending on their position.
In the hotel field, therefore, it is known practice to use foldaway beds which fold up when not in use in order to allow a valuable amount of space after converting the sleeping space into a working space. A conventional foldaway bed comprises a supporting structure of box type fixed to a wall and comprising two side walls and an upper horizontal wall. The bed is pivoted to the bottom part of this box using an appropriate mounting and hinging arrangement. The foldaway bed is movable between two positions, namely a folded position, in which the bed is arranged vertically inside the box, and an open position, in which the bed rests horizontally on the floor. The foldaway bed is also usually furnished with an element of decor so that in its folded position the box gives the external appearance, for example, of a wardrobe.
However, such foldaway beds are visually unattractive: when the bed is in the open position the sides and top of the box are visible and interfere with the decor of the room in which the bed is situated. The user may also have a feeling of being closed in, because in the down position the user's head is enclosed between the side walls and top wall of the box. In addition, the mounting arrangements for such beds are complex and difficult to install because the partitions of the walls are generally lightweight and not very thick. Further, these arrangements are completely unsuitable for installing anywhere other than against a wall.
To solve these problems, document FR-A-2 711 048 provides a mounting arrangement for a foldaway bed that does not require the use of a supporting structure. The arrangement is composed of two independent elements arranged on either side of the head of the foldaway bed and comprising wall and/or floor fixing means in the form of a bracket with reinforcing walls. It is thus possible to fix the mounting arrangement either to the floor only or to both the floor and wall. Each reinforcing wall includes a housing to accommodate the hinge pin of the bed.
However, for better use, these two bracket elements have to be fixed to adjoining furniture, such as bedside tables, since the two elements tend otherwise to sag out under the weight of the bed or in response to the various stresses as the foldaway bed is rotated. The main disadvantage of this arrangement is therefore that the hinge pin may come loose and the bed may drop down between the two bracket elements.
Furthermore, this mounting system has poor resistance to deformation: when the bed is pivoted, stresses give rise to a phenomenon of dislodgement of the arrangement due to the effect of the lever arm created by the weight and length of the bed.